Use Food as a Way to Help Your Loved One Cope With Alzheimer’s

Coping With Alzheimer’s

Do an experiment right now. Let your friend blindfold you. Sit on a chair. Now your friend will be adding a drop of different flavors onto your tongue. You have to identify them.

The flavors are fresh tomato, avocado, cilantro, chocolate, steak, barbecue sauce, and coconut. How well do you think you’ll do at identifying them? Most likely if you are like everyone else, you’ll get them all right.

But that’s not the experiment. The experiment is to see which of these flavors take you back into a place and time in your past where you experienced them the first time or a very powerful time. You might only have one of these flavors take you back in time or you may have several of them take you back in time.

This is a helpful experiment for coping with Alzheimer’s disease because if you can access their taste buds that link to a previous time in life, you could potentially ‘bring them back’.

Ask your loved one with Alzheimer’s if she remembers eating tomatoes out of a family farm or garden as a child while eating this recipe with her.

Watermelon Salad

Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients:

2 cups watermelon balls

1 cup cantaloupe balls

1 cup strawberries, sliced

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup pineapple chunks

2 ounces shredded coconut

4 ounces coconut water

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together. Let marinate for an hour.

Serve cold.

Ask your loved one with Alzheimer’s if she remembers eating watermelon as a child while eating this recipe with her.

Donna Schwontkowski

Dr. Donna Schwontkowski is a retired chiropractor with two degrees in nutrition and a Master's in herbology. She is convinced that every illness can be improved significantly through diet and nutritional protocols.